


at least death means i'll never be scared about dying again

by thepensword



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Gen, Lich Taako, bc:, don't worry about the major character death though, sorry my angst goblin strikes again, this is ouch sad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-23
Updated: 2018-10-23
Packaged: 2019-08-06 07:57:39
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,266
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16384250
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thepensword/pseuds/thepensword
Summary: Taako is a highly competent, extremely powerful, and absolutely gorgeous wizard. He knows what he’s doing. He doesn’t make mistakes easily.This time, he fucked up.Angus is the one who finds him.





	at least death means i'll never be scared about dying again

**Author's Note:**

> based on [this art](https://glowbat.tumblr.com/post/179333766186/did-you-not-think-this-would-have) by @glowbat on tumblr
> 
> warnings: character death, blood, grief, mentions of past trauma

Taako is a highly competent, extremely powerful, and absolutely gorgeous wizard. He knows what he’s doing. He doesn’t make mistakes easily.

This time, he fucked up.

It’s not even a real mission, and Taako’s fully aware of that fact. A lull in the action, a quickly escalating prank war, and the Director calls them to her office with a mission. It's not hard to figure out. Taako may play dumb, but he gets it. 

Go into the creepy dungeon. Fuck up the cultists. Come back richer. Easy peasy. So easy they even bring Angus.

Except maybe Taako gets a little bit overconfident and a little bit distracted and maybe they get a little bit separated and maybe, just maybe, a group of cultists get the drop on him.

He’s strong. He’s powerful. He fucks them up real good but they take him down in the end, and he falls to his knees with a gaping hole clean through his chest.

“Fuck,” gasps Taako. His lips are wet. His breathing is ragged. There’s a high-pitched whining in his ears and a dimming at the edges of his vision and no, he can’t die like this, he can’t—

He slumps forward, catching himself on his hands and hunching on all fours, shaking violently. His thoughts are racing. There has to be something he can do, but he’s alone in a dark room surrounded by the dead bodies of the cultists he’d taken out and he doesn’t know where the others are. He opens his mouth to cry for help but all that comes out is a wet cough that catches in his throat with enough force that he collapses all the way to the ground.

“Fuck,” says Taako, curling in on himself. He presses shaking hands to the wound in some desperate attempt to staunch the blood, but he knows it’s futile. He needs healing now or he’s not gonna make it.

He thinks he hears footsteps in the distance, and a voice calling his name. But the dark room is growing even darker and it’s getting harder and harder to breathe and despite the fact that he’s so, so afraid, some part of him remains impossibly calm.

_Dying shouldn’t feel so familiar_ , he thinks distantly, and closes his eyes.

 

* * *

 

 

There is infinite darkness.

“Oh, dear,” says the voice of a goddess, and there is a sound of a string being cut and knotted again. “That may change things a bit.”

And then, blinding light.

 

* * *

 

 

Taako rages.

Dying had hurt, but not like this. Not like remembering. Taako clutches at his spectral chest and screams and screams. The static has cleared and he remembers and it  _ hurts. _

_ Lup _ , he’s thinking.  _ Lup Lup Lup Lup. _

He wants to tear this building down piece by piece. He wants to fly out into the night air and raze the earth. He wants to tear apart every last stone in the world until he finds her. 

Faerun is a broken world and it’s their fault. The Hunger searches for them somewhere in the vastness of reality and there’s no escaping. And  _ Lup is gone. _

It’s not fair. Taako covers his mouth with his hands and screams, and he feels himself start to fall apart.

There are rapid footsteps, and a violent intake of breath. “Sir?” says a voice, trembling and fragile and terribly young.

Angus.

Taako pulls himself back together and opens his eyes. Angus is standing in the doorway, silhouetted against the light cast by the sconces in the hallway. His eyes are wide behind his round-rim glasses and his whole frame, tiny as it is, is trembling as he stares down at Taako’s own body lying bloody on the floor.

Taako wants to burn the world, but here’s the boy he’s let into his heart, and here’s his empty body lying broken and useless before him. Angus takes a single, hesitant step forward, tears rolling down his cheeks, and Taako gathers himself up and appears.

Angus makes a tiny sound, like a bitten-off sob so choked that it can’t escape his throat. “Taako?” he says, and his voice is so small. He’s so small. He’s so young. Why did they even bring him? What were they thinking? What would Lup say if she knew?

_ No. Don’t think about Lup. Focus on the kid. _

“Sir?” says Angus, and Taako  _ aches  _ at the catch in his voice. “Why are you, um, there...and also….over here?”

Taako may not know a whole lot about kids, but he does know this is nothing any child should see, even a child like Angus. He moves behind the boy and places a hand over his eyes, wishing he could steal the sight from his mind.  _ Feed it to Fisher— _ **no.**

“Aw, kiddo,” says Taako. He imagines he can feel Angus’ tears on his hand, when in truth all he can do is watch as they fall to the ground in glistening droplets. “You don’t need to see this.”

“S-sir—”

Taako spins him around gently and drops to his knees so that they’re eye level. He’s never seen Angus look so fragile as this, and it hurts to know he’s the cause of it. “Ango,” he says. “Don’t look, pumpkin.”

“I—I don’t understand.”

“I know,” sighs Taako. “I know.”

 

* * *

 

 

They sit outside in the cool night air as Magnus and Merle finish clearing out the dungeon. The sky is overcast, clouds blotting out the stars, and Taako hates how much that reminds him of the Hunger. But the Hunger isn’t here, and he has other concerns.

He conjures up some tea and forces it into Angus’ shaking hands.  _ Poison,  _ cries a voice in his mind that sounds a bit too much like Sazed for comfort, but Taako pushes it aside. That’s ridiculous. He’s had over a century of practice. He knows what he’s doing.

Anxiety still curdles in his gut as he watches Angus quietly drink the tea. Nothing happens, of course, but the anxiety remains, like some terrible serpent lying inside him. Taako swallows back bile and floats down to the ground to sit cross-legged before his student.

“You’re not dead,” says Angus, after his tears have dried enough for him to speak. Taako sighs, long and exhausted, and cranes his head back to peer at the sky.

“That’s complicated.”

“Then explain it!” shouts Angus, and then sits back with wide eyes, seemingly startled at his own outburst. Taako, absurdly, is overwhelmed with the urge to hug him, but with his spectral form he would only pass right through. That’s the worst part of being a lich. He remembers this now. He and Lup used to bitch about it to each other late at night—

_ No. Stop thinking about her. Save it for later. The kid needs you. _

It feels so strange to be needed again, after a decade of being useless, meaningless, worthless. Just the idiot wizard, the disgraced chef, running from a past he doesn’t understand, searching for faces in the crowd that he doesn’t quite remember. 

Angus is only ten years old. 

“Well,” says Taako. He reaches into the bag of holding he’d recovered from his body and pulls out a blanket, which he wraps delicately around Angus’ shoulders. “It’s a long story, and it starts with seven birds.”

 

* * *

 

 

Later, there will be raging, and tears, and apologies. Later there will be a search and a fire and a storm. Later, a family will come together in one final battle for the fate of all existence.

But now, a boy and his mentor sit in a field beneath the starless sky.

  
  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> :3 sorry not sorry visit me on [tumblr](https://thepensword.tumblr.com) it's 2am goodnight


End file.
